i’ve always seen my role as a photographer as being compressed into one singular course of action.  my job, and what i’m supposed to be good at, is taking a moment in time and preserving it.  that means capturing a person, an image, or a moment and preserving it in perpetuity.  within that basic role, there are about a million details.  what separates an actual photographer from a monkey with a disposable camera (because hey, a monkey can take a disposable camera and take a picture of a moment, nothing special there) is the ability to control the conditions under which the moment, person, or object is being documented and to produce a durable visual record of the moment that is aesthetically pleasing as well as accurate.  so to make a long story short, everything i photograph is special in that the way it appeared at the moment i took the picture is a moment that will never happen again.  mountains change shape, trees grow, shorelines rearrange, colors fade, and people age.  time changes everything.  more obviously, concerts and events are extremely dynamic moments, and images from these little bits of life become static when you take a picture of it.

but even though every image i take is “special” because its a unique moment, there are definitely those moments which are more important than others.  a few weeks ago, i was privileged enough to photograph a series of images of hula costumes which were used over the past few decades by hula halau o kekuhi.  lead by kumu hula nalani kanaka`ole, these costumes were  used in the internationally-recognized and televised merry monarch hula competition, and other competitions and performances as well.  kumu kanaka`ole is a hugely influential figure in the hula world, and a superstar in her own right, and her husband sig zane is pretty famous as well.  come to think of it, so’s their son.  yes, i was a little starstruck.  i was invited out to photograph these costumes at a hula workshop hosted at kamehameha schools’ kapalama campus.

it truly was a privilege and an honor, and a unique opportunity, since many of these costumes haven’t been shown publicly since they were last used in competition.  simply amazing.

on a nerdy camera note, these images were shot against a makeshift muslin background with a 40″ umbrella strobed 580EX II and a ceiling bounced 580EX II.  i set both to manual, dialed the exposure 1/3 of a stop under, and brought the background and image back to proper exposure in post-production, where the lines of the white background could be eliminated.  it was a challenging undertaking in post, but i’m quite happy with the results.

again i’d like to mahalo the zane/kanaka`ole `ohana for allowing me such unprecedented access.  enjoy.

-a

[ click here to jump off to the full image gallery! ]